DietBet.com Interview

More than a year ago DietBet.com asked if they could use me for publicity.  I agreed.  DietBet.com was invaluable to my weight loss journey.  They recently asked for a follow up interview.  I don’t know what they are going to write about me, but it gave me a lot to think about. 

The first thing they wanted to know, is what everyone wants to know, how did you do it?  I did it more than one way, but the way that worked best was eating every 3 hours, 5 times a day, 160-300 calories per feeding, South Beach Phase 1 foods.  I also went to the gym most every day. 

I was asked what got me started.  I don’t think the motivation that started this particular journey was much different than the 4,000 other times I tried to lose weight.  I was turning 49.  I thought next year you will be 50.  You have been fat your entire life and have always wanted to be thin.  While no day is promised, actuarially your 50s are your last decade where you have the best odds of coming out in pretty good shape.  (This is true of each new decade.)  Do it now while you have time.  Enjoy your 50s.  That was the start.   

I was asked what I liked about DietBet.com.  I started losing weight in January 2013.  I lost about 50 pounds then I started gaining, as I was prone to do.  Then my office sponsored a weight loss contest.  I looked at that flyer and knew I could win that contest.  Driven people are made for contests.  We’re great at singular focus.  Pay attention to Biggest Loser, the crazier a contestant, the more likely they are going to win.  I joined that office contest.  I won.  We had another.  I won.

It was during the second contest I learned about DietBet.com from Chris Powell’s Facebook page.  I signed up.  DietBet.com was a lot better than the office contests.  At DietBet.com you play against YOURSELF.  When you keep winning office contests it really starts to piss off your co-workers.   I pride myself on great relationships with co-workers.  I also play to win.  It’s a conundrum.   

I was asked what I liked about DietBet.com.  DietBet.com does not advocate a specific diet.  You are on your own.  That’s good because the most important thing you ever do is learn about yourself.   DietBet.com is a tool.  The best thing it did was give me a date with a weight, as in you must weigh 197 pounds by March 25^th to win the contest.  (I just made up that date and weight don’t bother trying to track it on my FB page, it’s not there.)  The date and weight kept me from cheating.  It kept me from having that glass of wine or dessert. 

I was asked what the hardest part was.  That’s easy.  It was, and is, temptation.  I am really good at restaurants.  I have a really hard time traveling and at parties because the food, in both instances, is unique.  I managed that by avoidance.  I hardly traveled at all while I was losing weight and I surely did miss it.

I was asked if I ever did any crazy things on DietBet.com.  Yes.  As I got smaller it got much harder to lose weight.  Keep in mind I lost over 100 pounds, so I carry extra skin that has weight.  I told her towards the end I did a lot of green juicing.  Once I did 9 days of green juicing.  I think that’s STUPID.  I hope I never do that again.

Then she asked if I could think of any bad things about dieting.  Yes.  The first thing I call the Ricochet Effect.  I gained weight immediately following the last diet contest.  I am pretty sure Biggest Loser contestants do that too.  To get to that end weight you work very hard.  It is difficult to keep up that very hard. 

Then you get to the hardest part which I have not conquered.  I call it Finding Normal and learning about my limitations.   It is particularly tough because I have never been normal.  I was fat starting at about 8 years old.  My parents were both fat.  My grandmother was fat.  They immediately started dieting me.  They did it out of love.  It didn’t work for them.  It didn’t work for me.  I have limited my food intake my entire life.

Me, Fourth Grade

 I have a daughter.  She is a size 00.  She is a model.  I never limited her food.  She eats garbage.  That being said she knows how to stop eating when she is no longer hungry.  Yesterday there was a to-go container in the refrigerator containing half her dinner from the previous night.  As she left to watch her boyfriend play basketball she said she was so happy when she came home she had that delicious dinner waiting for her.  Conversely, she and I went out to breakfast last Friday.  As my breakfast was served I immediately set aside half on a spare plate.  She asked if I was packing that.  I was.  She said I was not eating enough.  She might be right. 

My daughter, age 5

A couple days later we were eating cheese and crackers.  Crackers are carbs.  In my mind they are bad.  I ate two.  I told my daughter I rarely allow myself to eat food like that and when I do it sets off a trigger in my brain that says eat more.  My daughter said food limitations are bad because they screw with your brain.  She’s right.  She said take the cracker and break it into four pieces.  Put little pieces of cheese on each of the pieces.  Get buzzed off the food, not drunk.  My daughter loves food. Food creates anxiety in me. 

My daughter today

I told the DietBet.com woman you will never convince me all overweight people are sitting around eating like gluttonous pigs because I know what I can eat, and it’s very little.  I question whether it is because of genetics, food sensitivities or 40+ years of dieting.

The DietBet.com interview ended with a hard question.  She asked what I could do now that I couldn’t do before and how did I think differently about myself than I did before.  I was always  active.  Aside from the fact I can now exercise more than I could before there is not much I can do now that I couldn’t do before, except perhaps sit more comfortably in an airplane seat.  I never had to use a seatbelt extension. 

Me 1995

I told her I have a club foot that limits my physical activity. I will not set foot on a skateboard, hover board or paddle board because I have terrible balance and fear falling and breaking a bone.  I am not graceful.  This is because of my foot, not my weight.

As I answered her question about how I feel differently about myself I was surprised by the emotions it brought up in me.  I believe there is a big difference, in women of my generation, who grew up heavy, as opposed to those who grew up cheerleaders and got heavy.  It’s a difference you can see in the manner in which they dress.  Middle-aged, childhood-heavy women do not tend to wear tight or revealing clothes.  The got-heavy-later middle aged women still wear the small, tight clothes because that’s how they see themselves.  (Amazingly to me, younger heavy women now wear revealing clothes.  I think that’s pretty cool.)  In my mind, at least for my generation, always-heavy people live under a disability, and do not even know it.  I told the DietBet.com interviewer I had made hiring decisions, specifically hiring always-heavy women, because it is my belief they try harder.  They try harder because they feel less than, but they probably do not even know it.  They may not agree with me. 

Me, 2012

When you lose weight people treat you so differently.  You cannot imagine the difference.  I try very hard to be humble, and I don’t know how to say this humbly, so analytically, my transformation was like a butterfly.  I got pretty.  I have a pretty face, pretty hair, an hourglass body that I think has extra minutes on the hips.  I was a B cup.  I am now a triple D.  I lost band size, but not cup size.  Who would think that is possible?  And people tell me, constantly, how pretty I am.  I met a woman at a party on Saturday.  I ran into her again on Monday.  We greeted each other, her voice got low and she said, “I wanted to tell you on Saturday, but I didn’t, so I want to tell you now, you are really beautiful.”  I thanked her.  It made me want to cry.   I wasn't feeling beautiful at the time.

Me 2014

How do I feel differently about myself?  I want to be thin because the way I am treated now is SO MUCH BETTER.  It’s like living in a different world and it is crazy because I know I have always been EXACTLY THE SAME PERSON inside.  The shell changed.  The person inside is the same.  The different experiences the appearance gives you is like living in two different worlds.  The pretty world is so much better.

God sent me a gift and a lesson in the form of a very pretty daughter.  She says its good being pretty because pretty people make people happy just by looking at them.  But she added while I like having people come up to me all the time and tell me I am pretty, it’s not always a good thing.  She almost always takes someone with her on modeling jobs to keep strangers from approaching.  If she is not going to a job or a party she leaves the house with her hair not styled, no make-up, sweatpants and sunglasses so she looks less pretty.  

I’m gonna end with a story about a client who was recently in my office.  She was a large woman.  I have diet awards all over my office, in plain view, so I see them all the time, it’s important.  The client asked me a lot of question about weight loss, which I answered.  I stood up and bent in a manner that gave her clear view of my loose skinned, floppy arms to prove how much weight I lost.  If she’d asked I would have lifted up my shirt to show her my stomach.  (No guys, I won’t do this for you.)  She said she was impressed I was wearing a sleeveless top.  I told her it was hot, and the air was not working well in my office that day.  I told her my floppiness bothered me a lot more a year ago than it does now.  I said first you feel badly about being fat and then you lose weight and your closest friends and family members tell you about all the cosmetic surgery you need to get rid of that loose skin.  So how do you start feeling?  Terrible about having so much loose skin.  That surgery is expensive, not covered by insurance, painful and has a recovery period.  I’m not inclined to have it at this time, ask me again after I win the Powerball, except you won’t know when I win the Powerball. 

As soon as I find normal, I’ll let you know.

Hillmanns 13. 1917

THE HILLMANNS OF BROOKLYN

CHAPTER 13

1917

Rose with her daughter, Marian, and both look so happy.

Marian in the lake. Zsa Zsa Gabor, JFK, Dean Martin and Lena Horne were all born in 1917.

Rose and Marian

Herman on the rocks

I believe this is the Hillmanns house on Linden Street in Essex County, New Jersey.

I believe this is Herman's mother's house. She also moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey. She was living in Glen Rock.

Herman's mother, Emma, Rose and Marian. 

Herman working in his mother's garden.

Popular songs in 1917 were "Over There" and "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows."

In 1917 the Balfour Doctrine proclaimed British support for the establishment in Palestine of a homeland for the Jewish people.

Marian and Rose amidst the corn.

Grandma Emma is in the background with her granddaughters, Marian, Dorothy and Ruth. Emma had no grandsons. Dorothy and Ruth were Emma's daughter's children. Emma's daughter and her husband divorced. After the divorce these girls were raised by Emma.

Marian with Ruth and Dorothy. It's interesting to me that the girls viewed themselves as having been abandoned by their mother. Their father also lived in New Jersey, but he didn't have anything to do with them either. I learned about Ruth and Dorothy and met descendants through Ancestry.com.

Rose in the garden.

Rose, Marian and Emma in the corn.

I don't think the Hillmanns could let a Summer pass without going to the beach.

Marian and Herman

Does anyone know what they are doing?

Rose and Herman, bathing beauties

Rose is on the right, the woman on the left is unidentified.

Hillmanns 12. 1917. Siegele Relatives and WW1

THE HILLMANNS OF BROOKLYN

CHAPTER 12

1917.  WAR

In 1917 the Hillmanns spent a day with Rose's family and took pictures on the porch. Here we have Uncle William (Rose's brother), with 7 year old Marian and her Dad, Herman. Woodrow Wilson was President in 1917.

Grandma Henrietta with the Hillmanns: Herman, Marian and Rose or Rose's sister, Angelica. Henrietta was born in 1854 in New York. In early 1917 Europe was in turmoil and President Wilson called for peace without victory, as in, can't we all just get along?

In early 1917 the Tsar abdicated in Russia.

Marian plays with her dolls on the porch.

Henry Siegele, Rose's father, was born in 1849 in Alsace Lorraine, a region that was regularly fought over and was sometimes German and sometimes French. Henry spoke German and immigrated to the US in 1860. According to census records first he was a clerk, then a carpenter and later a bartender. I tend to think he graduated to bar owner, because that's what Herman's father was. Tthe Siegeles, like the Hillmanns, appear to have lived in comfort.

Our core Hillmann family--Rosie, Marian and Herman. Herman has been described to me as a very honorable man. The kind of man who couldn't sleep at night if he owed someone money. His manners were described as "Victorian". The German Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria's grandson.

Next to the Siegele Porch pictures were pictures of young men, whom I am presuming to be Siegeles. I can only identify Rose's brothers, but she also had many, many cousins. After the Tsar abdicated Lenin came back to Russia from exile.

I don't know who this handsome, dapper man is. In 1917 Congress gave President Wilson the power to draft and if you're a genealogist you can find almost every man in the United States draft registration card, written in their own hand.

This is Rose's brother, Henry. In 1917, when he registered for the draft he reported working for Borden Condensed Milk. (When he registered in 1942 he worked for Borden Farm Products.)  At this time in history, in New York City, all the Siegele and Hillmann men worked for one company their entire working lives.

In an earlier album we saw Marian with her Uncle William on a motorcycle, this is Uncle Henry with motorcycle.

I don't know who this man is, but it doesn't look to me like he was fighting the war in Europe, maybe it's Henry and he had some kind of ranger duties?

William? A cousin? In 1917 Germany began bombing London. The British Royal Family changed their last name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor and I was told Herman hated and was ashamed of being German.

Rose's youngest sister, Angelica, married Robert Langlotz.

Mr. and Mrs. Langlotz honeymooned in Bermuda. Bermuda was a huge vacation destination for Siegeles, they all went there repeatedly. 

If you enjoyed this album there are 11 in front of it, and more to come.

Weight Loss, Weight Maintenance, Good Morning America, Weight Watchers, Oprah, Hard Boiled Eggs and Throw in Some Male Bashing

    

            I’ve written before about how maintenance after weight loss is harder than weight loss itself.  That’s true for me.  I have two friends who lost a lot of weight.  They both seem to keep it off with no problem, one uses Weight Watchers the other uses Atkins.  God bless ‘em.  I’m jealous.  My rant is not for them.

            People ask me, “Do you do the same thing you did when you were losing weight.”  No.  When I was losing weight I ate every 3 hours like clockwork low carb, high protein, mostly low animal fat but for hard boiled eggs, keeping calories per feeding at 160-300.  I did not travel.  I avoided parties, because they were so hard.  I cheated two weekends in a year, planned cheating. 

            Since I hit my low my weight has fluctuated.  I was hoping to find normal.  I am still working at it.  I was pleased enough with my weight this morning.    

            So this morning I have Good Morning America on and they are talking about the new Weight Watchers Plan.  Oprah is endorsing it.  Didn’t Oprah just buy stock in Weight Watchers?  I google it.  Yep.  C’mon, this isn’t news.  This is advertising.   I loved the Oprah show when it was on, but is Oprah your long term weight loss success model?  I hope not.  Scary.  I wish my two skinny friends mentioned in the first paragraph blogged.

            It gets closer to the time for me to leave the house and there’s some actor on Good Morning America.  They are flashing an emaciated picture of him in his latest movie.  He had to lose 30 pounds for a role.  They ask if it was hard to lose the weight and gain it back.  He said it wasn’t hard to gain it back, all he had to do was eat.  He said it was hard to lose it.  He said in the movie he didn’t have to do much acting because the acting required suffering and he was suffering.  He was asked what he ate.  He said hard boiled eggs and salad.  A friend asked me last week what I ate for lunch.  I responded I keep hard boiled eggs at the office.  “What?”  I responded that’s all I keep at my office if I get hungry I eat hard boiled eggs, except when I’m green juicing, so it’s hard boiled eggs or green juice. 

            So why am I not rail thin?  Because I do not eat like that all the time.  I socialize and go out.  I’m still searching for normal.  I’ll let you know when I find it.  I don’t plan on joining Weight Watchers.  I know it works for some people but I’ve done it a couple times.  That actor who is emaciated on hard boiled eggs and salad and is happy with how he looks when he eats, I’m jealous.  Of course, then again, he is a guy and they tend to love themselves, jealous.

Just a Piece of Paper

It’s very common for couples to live together without marriage.  They often say marriage is just a piece of paper.  They do not need it.  That piece of paper confers a bundle of rights, far more rights than I am going to spew forth here today, but here are some.

Imagine a young couple, happily cohabitating, and they have a baby.  Dad doesn’t have any rights because the unmarried mother of a child in Florida has ALL the rights.  The father’s name on a birth certificate does not establish paternity or confer rights.  A Department of Financial Services child support order does not even establish rights.  For a father to have rights he must have been married to the mother when the child was born or go to court and get an order of paternity.

Let’s stay with our young couple, with their little child and let us imagine one of them dies in a car accident and it’s not their fault.  A claim is pursued, the result of which is a lot of money.  Who gets the money?  The little child.  When does the child receive the money?  When he or she turns 18.  What happens in the meantime?  The surviving parent has to figure out how to raise that child on his or her income.  If they are lucky they also receive social security dependency benefits paid on behalf of the deceased parent. 

Wipe the slate clean, we’re back with our young couple and now imagine Mom dies, abandons or goes to jail.  Who gets that child?  It won’t necessarily be Dad because this child has no legal father. 

What happens if, in the case of our young couple, the biological father is Mom’s boyfriend, but Mom is married to another?  Who is the baby’s father?  The mother’s husband.  The Husband would get to pursue the wrongful death action and he would get the money too, because he is the husband.  Husband also has the rights to the baby, because he is the legal father.  Now maybe you are asking, but why would he want that?  What if there is a million dollar wrongful death case?

Imagine your average unmarried couple living together.  One dies.  The one who died owned the house and had the most money.  He or she did not have a will.  The survivor is SOL.  That will is also “just” a piece of paper.

Let’s stick with this scenario and add a two year old to the mix.  The couple had a two year old.  Who inherits the house and money?  The two year old.  But the two year doesn’t have the capacity or money to probate the estate or pay for his or her new home.  Who gets to do that?  Probably the surviving parent if they care enough to preserve the asset for their child.  He or she gets to spend their own money to get the assets put in their two year old’s name.  The two year old’s money gets locked in a guardianship to protect the minor child.  This is a terrible result for the surviving parent.   All these scenarios are terrible for the survivor, which is the whole point of this blog post.

Oftentimes senior citizens don’t want to get married.  They have children from previous marriages to whom they want to leave their assets.  Very frequently step-parents and adult children do not get along, why create the headache?  But what happens if a senior couple has been living together for a decade when one of them gets dementia.  In steps an adult child who gets guardianship and takes over the demented parent’s life, no more cohabitation.  Oh well, perhaps it’s all for the best.  Personally, I think better to plan your life yourself. 

Imagine an unmarried couple who have lived together for 30 years.  One dies in an accident, the result of the negligence of another.  The survivor has zero rights to pursue a claim because under the Florida Wrongful Death Act to benefit you must be a minor child or surviving spouse to receive damages for the loss.

Contrast this with the married couple where the spouse who has all the money gets angry at the spouse who doesn’t so he or she writes a will leaving the survivor nothing and then dies.  Guess what?  The surviving spouse is entitled to a spousal share because the law protects him or her.  You can’t disinherit your spouse, absent a signed nuptial agreement which is, once again, “just” a piece of paper.

And then there are survivor benefits:  social security, VA, pensions, etc. 

You ask why the law doesn’t protect people better.  Do unmarried couples want laws binding them to each other?  We abolished common law marriage in Florida in the 1960s.  I wonder why people do not protect themselves and each other?  

Hillmanns 11. 1917 New Jersey

THE HILLMANNS OF BROOKLYN

CHAPTER 11

1917 NEW JERSEY

In 1917 we have the Hillmanns living in New Jersey.  They didn't stay there long.  Herman worked in Manhattan and the Hillmanns were NYC to the depth of their souls.

But I think,sometimes, you have a young family and you think that family might do better outside of the City.  Marian Hillmann was 7 years old.

She is practicing being a mother.

Marian with her own mother, Rose.

Of sleds and snowmen

Herman's mother, Emma, also moved to New Jersey in 1917, which may have had some bearing on the Hillmanns move.

Marian and Rose on top.

Almost all little girls like to dress up, and many big girls too.

The gangs all here.

By 1917 the Hillmanns are no longer taking photos just for events. They seem to have the camera handy to capture their little girl growing up. I'm so glad they did.

Marian unposed and happy. If you enjoyed this album there are 10 chapters ahead of it, and many more to come.